Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Tehran and home again

Tehran and home again

The stay in Masoud and Selma's B&B
was agreeable. Both our hosts are sports people. Their sport is
rowing and Selma is the coach of the national girls' team, it is her
full time job. They gave us the feeling of being a member of the
family and twice we shared iftar (the first meal after sunset in
ramazan) with them.

Tehran is a very big city consisting of
parts separated by big highways. We lived very close to a Metro
station and we used this system to travel around, quite convenient.

We visited the highlights, like
national museum, the palaces of the last shah etc. and picknicked in
parks. Our travel guide book stated that eating in public is
prohibited during ramazan and that you can get in big trouble if the
police spots you doing so. But we were absolutely not the only
picknickers in the parks, so things may have changed the last couple
of years. Still, travelling in this country during ramazan is a bit
complicated, as you have to prepare carefully how and where to get
(or carry) your lunch when going on a sightseeing tour. All in all
restaurants and bars are not easy to find in this country, being it
ramazan or not.

As our flight was in the small hours of
the night we had a taxi to the airport at 22.00 hrs. We picked up our
bikes from the baggage depot in good order, changed our Rials for a
good rate, and imagine our surprise when, on entering the departure
hall, we heard someone shouting our names. It was Bahram Jallipour,
our Warmshowershost from Bander – Anzali on the Caspian coast, one
month ago. He was travelling to his sister in Sweden with another
flight the same night. He is a nice and funny man and we spent a
couple of hours together, talking, repacking and laughing a lot. He
is now riding his bike somewhere in Europe and he might direct it our
way.....

Both our flights, in Tehran and
Istanbul, departed with an hour delay, no problem. On arrival at
Amsterdam airport one piece of baggage was not there though. Quite
annoying, queing up for the desk for the report. The special taxi
(bicycles) just had to wait another extra hour. But then.....

we arrived at our son's house just two
hours after they had arrived themselves from the birth clinic: we
could admire both our newly born granddaughter and her mother in good
health. A very happy re-union with our next of kin and with this new
little human being surprising us with her earlier than scheduled arrival in our world.

Our missing bag was delivered in good
shape two days later, we had to work a couple of days to clear the
jungle that used to be our garden and now we are trying to get used
to the regular pensioners' lives. After an interesting, not always
easy, but very satisfactory journey.